The Money Expert: “Do Not Buy A House!”… The 10 Ways To Make REAL Money! Ramit Sethi (E266)

0:00:02 Ah, this is driving me insane.
0:00:04 To make a lot of money, you don’t need to be a genius.
0:00:06 Suggesting to remember a few key things.
0:00:09 Ramit Sethi, financial expert, The Money Man.
0:00:10 Miratized bestseller.
0:00:13 Has more than 20,000 documented success stories.
0:00:16 This is your chance to never worry about money again.
0:00:19 You can live a rich life regardless of where you came from,
0:00:21 regardless of your income.
0:00:24 How many people are clear on what their rich life looks like?
0:00:25 Less than one percent.
0:00:28 When I talk to people who have a spending problem,
0:00:30 100% of the time, they always say the same thing.
0:00:31 I just need to earn more.
0:00:33 If you doubled your income today,
0:00:35 do you think your problems would disappear?
0:00:36 No.
0:00:37 Some of the stats I pulled out from your book,
0:00:41 about 25% of people who make $100,000 a year plus
0:00:43 are still living paycheck to paycheck.
0:00:46 Makes us realize that maybe the things we think we need
0:00:49 are things that we have been socially taught are important.
0:00:51 For example, owning a house is the best investment.
0:00:53 It means you are successful,
0:00:56 but it can be a very bad financial decision.
0:00:58 And there are far better, far simpler investments.
0:01:01 So I’ve got 100 pounds that I want to invest.
0:01:02 Where do I start?
0:01:04 I love that we’re getting into the nuts and bolts.
0:01:06 Let’s do this exercise together and everyone can do it with us.
0:01:08 First off, and then…
0:01:09 Got it.
0:01:12 Now there’s just one more thing you have to do.
0:01:13 Do you know the math?
0:01:17 I would have 736,000 in my account.
0:01:19 Yeah.
0:01:21 Remets 10 money rules.
0:01:24 This is where the real wealth is created.
0:01:26 Number one.
0:01:33 This episode changed my perspective on money.
0:01:34 I’m an investor.
0:01:37 I’ve been investing for the last six, seven years at different levels.
0:01:42 Big companies, small companies, the S&P 500 funds you name it.
0:01:45 But, Ramit changed my mind.
0:01:50 He changed my mind on money, spending, investing.
0:01:55 And he changed my mind on something that I think 95% of you that are listening to this podcast
0:02:00 and they’re about to listen to this, need to have your mind changed on too.
0:02:03 That if you have the right philosophy towards money,
0:02:07 the right perspective and mindset towards money,
0:02:12 then there is a path to living our rich life.
0:02:16 To becoming rich that enough people are not talking about.
0:02:19 He debunks the myths of money.
0:02:21 The limiting beliefs about money.
0:02:25 And he confronts all of the unhelpful advice about money
0:02:30 that stands in the way of you becoming rich.
0:02:34 There’s an app on my phone that I now have installed because of this conversation.
0:02:41 And there are three big investments that I’ve now made in my life because of this conversation.
0:02:44 And there is one key idea
0:02:50 that I now believe will make me ten times more wealthy over the next three decades
0:02:53 because of this conversation.
0:02:55 You’re gonna love it.
0:02:55 Enjoy.
0:03:05 Ramit,
0:03:09 someone’s just clicked on this podcast on YouTube, on Spotify, on Apple,
0:03:14 and they saw the title, they saw the thumbnail, they thought that sounds interesting.
0:03:16 Tell me why you think
0:03:20 they should stay and listen to what we’re going to talk about today,
0:03:23 what they stand to gain if they give us their time.
0:03:27 Whenever someone hears someone talking about money,
0:03:28 they get rigid.
0:03:31 They instantly think that someone’s going to come in and tell them,
0:03:33 you can’t spend money on lattes,
0:03:36 you can’t go on vacation, you can’t buy any new clothes,
0:03:39 save all your money until you’re 90 years old,
0:03:43 and maybe just maybe then you can spend it.
0:03:45 And I don’t believe in any of that.
0:03:49 I think you should spend extravagantly on the things you love
0:03:53 as long as you cut costs mercilessly on the things you don’t.
0:03:58 I think you should live a rich life today and an even richer life tomorrow.
0:04:01 And so when you combine money and psychology,
0:04:06 you start to understand that there is more to a rich life than just some number in a spreadsheet.
0:04:09 People already know they should be saving more.
0:04:11 They know about compound interest.
0:04:13 They may not know the intricacies,
0:04:17 but they understand if they invest some now, they’re going to have more later.
0:04:18 So what’s stopping them?
0:04:21 That’s been the central question that I’m fascinated with for the last 20 years.
0:04:26 That’s why when I studied human behavior and persuasion and psychology,
0:04:31 I was obsessed with this question of what are the things we know we should do,
0:04:33 but we still don’t.
0:04:38 You can live a rich life regardless of where you came from.
0:04:41 You can live a rich life regardless of your income.
0:04:44 Now, of course, having a higher income dramatically helps.
0:04:48 But just like fitness, we can all improve where we are.
0:04:50 And that’s what we get to talk about today.
0:04:54 When you talk about the language of money, what do you mean?
0:04:56 I mean understanding the nuts and bolts of money.
0:04:59 So just the same way that we all learn how to drive.
0:05:02 We learn the rules of the road, when to use our turn signals.
0:05:06 Most of us do not have even the equivalent knowledge of money.
0:05:11 For example, the basic language of money would be what percentage of your income
0:05:14 are you saving and why?
0:05:17 What percentage are you investing and why?
0:05:23 When will you have $100,000 or $500,000 or a million dollars?
0:05:26 And what will that money get you?
0:05:28 Because just having a million dollars in the bank is pointless.
0:05:32 What does it get you specifically?
0:05:34 This is the basic language of money.
0:05:40 You’ve got to know your key four, six numbers in your life, not many, just a few.
0:05:45 But once you understand those numbers, it’s like understanding the speed limit.
0:05:48 Understanding the speed limit means you understand a lot.
0:05:49 There’s a rule of the road.
0:05:51 If you go too fast, what’s going to happen?
0:05:53 Why do these rules exist?
0:05:55 And these rules are similar in money.
0:05:57 You can break them.
0:06:00 That’s OK, but you got to understand the rules first.
0:06:01 What are those numbers that I need to know?
0:06:03 There’s four numbers that I really like to track.
0:06:07 I track these myself, and these are the numbers I encourage.
0:06:09 The first is your fixed costs.
0:06:17 Those would be your rent or your mortgage, your any debt payments, groceries, the money
0:06:21 that you are spending every single month that is essentially fixed.
0:06:26 And the number I recommend for that is 50% to 60% of your take home pay.
0:06:31 So that would be if you’re spending 50% to 60% of what you make, what you take home on
0:06:37 your rent, your groceries, any debt payments, your car, you’re in good shape.
0:06:39 The next one is your savings.
0:06:41 That would be roughly 5% to 10%.
0:06:46 Savings would be things like an emergency fund, savings for a down payment for a car,
0:06:47 things like that.
0:06:49 Third is investments.
0:06:52 This is where the real wealth is created.
0:06:56 And for this, 5% to 10% of take home is fine.
0:06:59 Of course, the more you put in, the more you’re going to have.
0:07:06 And then the fourth category, the one I love the most is called guilt free spending.
0:07:08 This is going out for cocktails in New York.
0:07:11 It’s buying a beautiful shirt.
0:07:19 It’s treating your friends whatever you love, yoga, 20 to 35% of your take home pay.
0:07:24 So if you’re watching or you’re listening to this, just take 15 minutes.
0:07:27 Back of the napkin, jot down your approximate numbers.
0:07:32 You don’t even have to get them perfect and you will be able to benchmark how you are
0:07:35 spending compared to those numbers.
0:07:38 I’ll tell you that those numbers tell me a lot.
0:07:42 It’s almost, if you just show me those four numbers of your spending, I can tell so much.
0:07:44 I can tell what you love spending on.
0:07:45 I can tell what you don’t.
0:07:49 I can tell what your priorities are.
0:07:51 And I can also tell where you are out of alignment.
0:07:54 So I’ll give you an example.
0:07:56 When I ask people, what is your rich life?
0:08:00 One of the common answers they say is I want to do what I want when I want.
0:08:02 I go, oh God, not this answer again.
0:08:03 I hear it every day.
0:08:06 I go, wow, that’s so interesting.
0:08:08 So what do you want?
0:08:14 They go, uh, most people have never thought beyond a trite answer.
0:08:16 So then the next answer I often get is freedom.
0:08:17 I want freedom.
0:08:19 I go, great, that sounds good.
0:08:20 What is freedom?
0:08:21 I want to do what I want when I want.
0:08:29 I look at their numbers and I see a huge payment that they’re making to a 30 year mortgage.
0:08:30 I see debt payments.
0:08:32 I see car payments.
0:08:34 And I go, now this is interesting.
0:08:41 You want freedom, but you have essentially anchored yourself down to not be able to travel
0:08:44 or to pivot or to move.
0:08:45 How can those two be?
0:08:47 How can you reconcile those two?
0:08:50 And that dissonance is actually a fascinating moment.
0:08:52 I love when we experience dissonance.
0:08:53 We all do.
0:08:56 I say that I want to work out more, but I don’t work out more.
0:08:57 Why?
0:09:03 And what you’ll discover is people often, they simply have never thought about it.
0:09:10 What our rich life is, these generic phrases, freedom, flexibility, it’s just words.
0:09:14 What I really want somebody to say, I want them to go a lot deeper, is to say, I want
0:09:17 to be able to travel for six weeks a year.
0:09:19 I want to go to London.
0:09:21 I want to go to New Delhi.
0:09:25 I want to go to Thailand because I want to visit my family.
0:09:26 That’s a good start.
0:09:30 If we get even more specific, they tell me what seat on the airline they’re sitting on.
0:09:31 They tell me where they’re eating.
0:09:34 They tell me who they’re bringing with them.
0:09:40 But to simply say, I want freedom is so vague that when I look at your numbers, there’s
0:09:45 often a huge incongruity with how you’re spending versus what you claim your rich life is.
0:09:51 How many people from your experience of interviewing people and doing this research are clear on
0:09:56 what their rich life looks like down to what you described that I want to travel for a
0:10:01 couple of months a year, and then even further down to which seat I’m going to be and which
0:10:03 class I’m going to be on as I travel?
0:10:04 Less than 1%.
0:10:07 Less than 1% of people know that.
0:10:10 Most people literally say, I want to do what I want when I want.
0:10:14 That is there the extent to which they’ve thought about a rich life.
0:10:19 How does it matter to be, what did that 1%, that less than 1% of people that have that
0:10:26 planned out have as an advantage or a benefit from that meticulous thought that the other
0:10:27 99% don’t have?
0:10:33 Because they can craft their rich life that is uniquely theirs, almost like getting a handmade
0:10:34 glove.
0:10:39 And in fact, the more you craft your rich life, the more bewildering it looks to the outside
0:10:40 world.
0:10:42 So I’ll give you an example from my own life.
0:10:44 I love to travel.
0:10:50 I spend a lot of money when my wife and I, we go, we’ll travel for months at a time.
0:10:51 I love hotels.
0:10:53 I love the hospitality.
0:10:55 I love the details.
0:10:58 I love it all.
0:11:01 I don’t really care about cars, not at this phase of my life.
0:11:03 It’s just not that important to me.
0:11:09 So when I talk about my money dials or the things that I love to spend money on, I might
0:11:15 spend a crazy amount on a hotel per night, just because I love it.
0:11:17 But I drive a car that’s almost 20 years old.
0:11:19 It’s just not important to me.
0:11:20 And I want that.
0:11:26 I want to hear in your life what you spend extravagantly on, but then you cut cost mercilessly
0:11:33 on because I want that duality, which indicates you are intentional about your rich life.
0:11:36 What if we’re buying things to impress other people and we don’t, because it’s hard to
0:11:40 when looking in from the outside, especially it’s hard to know if someone actually likes
0:11:45 Lamborghinis or if they’re buying Lamborghinis because they were beat up when they were
0:11:49 nine years old on the playground and they’re trying to overcompensate and make the world.
0:11:51 And does it matter why they’re buying it?
0:11:52 Does it matter?
0:11:53 I don’t know.
0:11:54 First of all, how would we even know?
0:11:55 How would they know?
0:11:56 Is there a difference?
0:12:00 Do you think, just in your opinion, on the impact that that purchase has on us, whether
0:12:05 we’re doing it intrinsically or we’re doing it extrinsically, because I reflect on some
0:12:08 of the things that I spent money on and I go, that was for someone else.
0:12:12 Whereas there’s other things I spend money on, which are maybe health related or travel
0:12:16 related like convenience, flying in a nice class on a plane, which I go, no, that’s actually
0:12:18 adding a lot of benefit to my life.
0:12:23 Whereas that mansion I bought out in the countryside when I was 23 or whatever was a terrible decision.
0:12:27 It took me away from my friends because it was an hour and a half outside of the city
0:12:29 and none of my friends ever came to it.
0:12:33 So I was just arriving at midnight after work in this fucking mansion with his tennis court
0:12:37 by myself, sleeping for three hours and then driving another hour and a half back to the
0:12:38 city where all my friends and work were.
0:12:44 I go, that was a stupid fucking decision based on extrinsic external motivations.
0:12:45 It’s a great question.
0:12:51 And particularly in America, we love this idea of ownership.
0:12:56 We are taught, you’ve got to own owning a house is the best investment.
0:12:58 It means you are successful.
0:13:01 And if you’re renting, no one really says this.
0:13:05 But what they deep down say is, you’re a loser.
0:13:09 This individualistic strain really runs deep.
0:13:14 And it has led a lot of people to make poor financial decisions.
0:13:19 First of all, you might be surprised to hear my view is that owning can be a good financial
0:13:22 decision, but it also can be a very bad financial decision.
0:13:26 In fact, I rent by choice.
0:13:30 And living in New York, for example, I lived here for a long time.
0:13:39 I knew that if I were to buy, I would be losing thousands of dollars every single month because
0:13:46 it actually costs more than twice as much to own than to rent.
0:13:51 But can you imagine the type of pressures even I got from people who would come over
0:13:54 and say, oh, so do you own this place?
0:13:58 The place that I was renting, I said, no, I rent.
0:14:01 And there was this visible moment of confusion.
0:14:02 They’re shaking my hand.
0:14:07 They know that I’m the I will teach to be rich guy, but I rent.
0:14:13 How can you be teaching money, but you rent isn’t renting for losers?
0:14:18 And I have to say, because I was rock solid confident in my decision, that pressure did
0:14:21 not affect me.
0:14:26 But I want to also say that a lot of us buy things based on status.
0:14:31 The idea that we don’t buy things based on what people around us think is nonsense.
0:14:37 We buy things based on status to deny it is absurd.
0:14:44 But I do think that for the big purchases in your life, like a house, a car, the big things,
0:14:45 you’ve got to run the numbers.
0:14:49 And if you decide, hey, you know what, I want to buy a house, even though it’s going to
0:14:54 cost me an extra $600,000 in opportunity costs and phantom costs, but I’m going to do it
0:14:57 because I like it or it makes me feel good.
0:14:59 I say, God bless.
0:15:04 But if you simply make decisions based on what other people around you do, then you
0:15:06 will discover like you did.
0:15:11 I thought I was going to feel a certain way and I don’t really feel that way.
0:15:15 And that, for me, is an opportunity for you to interrogate your own beliefs.
0:15:18 And money is like a personal zero sum game, right?
0:15:25 Like so I can’t just spend indefinitely so buying that ridiculous house out in the countryside
0:15:30 takes away from something which might have genuinely brought me closer to happiness like
0:15:33 I don’t know, going away with my family or whatever it might have been.
0:15:37 You talk there about buying property, I find that really curious because the popular narrative
0:15:41 is for most people, the minute they get any decent amount of money is to buy your first
0:15:42 house and that’s what people do.
0:15:47 They take a 10% deposit or 20% deposit, whatever it might be, and they buy a house.
0:15:51 Why is that a poor investment?
0:15:53 Why is that a bad thing to do?
0:15:55 Because that does kind of stick counter to the popular narrative.
0:15:59 Well, we have to remember first of all where the popular narrative came from.
0:16:07 In America, if you ask people what is the American dream, the answer is inextricably tied
0:16:10 up with a single family home with a white picket fence.
0:16:11 That’s not an accident.
0:16:18 That is the result of decades of messaging, some might call it propaganda.
0:16:22 First of all, most people in the world do not live in single family homes like we do
0:16:23 in America.
0:16:24 That has caused a lot of issues.
0:16:30 But to leave that part aside, this is how most people think about buying a house.
0:16:37 They think grandma bought a house in Austin, Texas in 1970 for $100,000.
0:16:43 Grandma just sold it 50 years later for $1 million.
0:16:45 Grandma made $900,000.
0:16:49 They go, “It’s the most profitable thing you could do, buy a house.”
0:16:51 I go, “Okay, that sounds really nice.
0:16:58 Did granny factor in how much she spent on maintenance for the past 50 years?”
0:16:59 No.
0:17:02 Did granny factor in inflation and how that affected her return?
0:17:03 No.
0:17:04 What’s inflation?
0:17:09 Did granny factor in the opportunity costs of what that down payment could have been
0:17:11 used if invested in the S&P 500?
0:17:12 No.
0:17:17 Did granny look at all these phantom costs such as interest on the loan?
0:17:18 No.
0:17:22 It’s not simply the bigger number minus the smaller number.
0:17:23 That’s wrong.
0:17:26 That is simplistic.
0:17:28 For the biggest purchase of your life, you’ve got to go deeper.
0:17:34 Again, when I was living here, I kept a very close eye on real estate.
0:17:40 The place right next to me, same square footage, same number of bedrooms, same everything,
0:17:45 it would have cost 2.2 times what I was paying in rent.
0:17:50 Just to give you an example, if I was paying $3,000 a month, it would have cost about $6,400
0:17:53 a month to own.
0:17:54 I said, “You know what?
0:17:55 I like renting.
0:17:57 If I have a problem, I just text my landlord.
0:18:03 I took the $3,400 I would have spent owning when factoring in phantom costs, maintenance,
0:18:05 interest, taxes, all that.”
0:18:06 I simply invested it.
0:18:10 I made more money doing that than I would have owning.
0:18:15 What about if you’re buying somewhere for the rental income?
0:18:17 That can work.
0:18:23 Owning real estate as an investment can be part of a well-diversified portfolio if you
0:18:24 run the numbers.
0:18:27 Right now, there’s a lot of hype.
0:18:30 People go, “I’m going to buy a house and if I don’t like it or whatever, I’m just going
0:18:31 to rent it out.”
0:18:32 Okay.
0:18:33 Fine.
0:18:41 But you’ve got to remember that if your mortgage is $1,000, that’s not just the amount you’re
0:18:42 paying.
0:18:43 There’s a lot more.
0:18:49 In fact, in my estimations, I add 50% to that price, so $1,500 a month, which would include
0:18:51 a roof repair happening 19 years from now.
0:18:54 We’ve got to amortize that out.
0:18:57 Labor costs, interest, all that.
0:19:01 If you can rent it out and make a profit, fantastic.
0:19:03 It cash flows?
0:19:04 That’s awesome.
0:19:08 What you discover is that most people who buy a primary residence, the place they want
0:19:15 to live in, they buy it because they want it and then they tell themselves it’s an investment.
0:19:22 Buying a house can be an investment, but oftentimes it’s not and there are far better, far simpler
0:19:23 investments.
0:19:24 Here’s my key message.
0:19:26 I want to make sure nobody misunderstands me.
0:19:29 I’ve been accused of saying buying a house is bad.
0:19:30 No, I never said that.
0:19:34 In fact, I will buy a house myself one day and when I do, it’s going to be a terrible
0:19:37 financial decision and I’m going to do it anyway.
0:19:43 My key message is for the biggest purchase of your life, you’ve got to run the numbers.
0:19:45 Sometimes buying can be a good financial decision.
0:19:49 Often renting can be a good financial decision.
0:19:53 Run the numbers and never feel guilty for renting.
0:19:59 As it relates to buying a house, I’ve always been hesitant because I’m scared really of
0:20:02 the point you mentioned about being anchored to a location.
0:20:06 The way that I’ve justified that away is by saying, well, I’ll just Airbnb it when I’m
0:20:09 not there or I’ll rent it out if I decide to move to New York or whatever.
0:20:17 Is there a cost in the opportunity of being less flexible about where you can be that
0:20:21 people don’t think about, especially when they’re younger and they’re probably a little
0:20:25 bit unencumbered by life at that point?
0:20:26 Yes.
0:20:31 Buying a house is one of the most profound financial decisions that will affect your
0:20:34 lifestyle ever.
0:20:39 You can sell a car even at a minor loss, but selling a house involves massive transaction
0:20:44 costs and labor that most people don’t anticipate.
0:20:48 One of the reasons that I rent is for lifestyle reasons.
0:20:53 Well, yes, I make more money renting and investing the difference than I would owning, but also
0:20:54 lifestyle.
0:20:57 I don’t know that I’m going to be in the same place for 10 years, which is one of the
0:21:02 key things that I would encourage people to decide before they buy.
0:21:05 You want to know that you’re going to be there for at least 10 years because then you can
0:21:10 spread all those transaction costs, spread them out over 10 years.
0:21:14 They become much more affordable, kind of like buying an expensive jacket.
0:21:17 If you buy it and you wear it once, that’s really expensive.
0:21:21 If you buy it and wear it over 10 years, it becomes a lot more affordable.
0:21:26 Now, take that multiply by a thousand and that’s a house.
0:21:31 Particularly for young people, I don’t give a lot of unsolicited advice.
0:21:36 I used to do it when I was young, when I just learned about money and I realized nobody
0:21:37 really wants to hear it.
0:21:39 They really don’t.
0:21:41 If somebody comes to me, they come to my blog, my social media, great.
0:21:46 Otherwise, I’m not going around telling people you should do this.
0:21:50 Once in a while though, I get a young person asking me, “I’m just about to graduate from
0:21:51 college.
0:21:54 What advice do you have for me?”
0:22:01 At that moment, the best piece of advice that I have is move where the action is and typically
0:22:03 that’s a big city.
0:22:10 That would be where there’s more jobs, where there’s simply more people if you’re looking
0:22:11 for relationships.
0:22:17 There’s a lot of tacit knowledge that happens in big cities like, “Oh, have you tried this?
0:22:19 Have you seen that musical?
0:22:24 Have you tried this thing, this idea that’s going around?”
0:22:29 Often surrounding yourself geographically can be hugely rewarding to you as you grow.
0:22:33 You can’t do that if you bought a house because everybody told you that it was going to be
0:22:34 the best investment.
0:22:38 If I were to say, “Show me where you calculated the numbers that it was going to be a great
0:22:44 investment,” 75% plus percent of people have never created a simple spreadsheet.
0:22:50 How does buying a house compare in terms of returns to something like investing in the
0:22:51 S&P 500?
0:22:53 It’s quite poor actually.
0:22:54 Really?
0:22:55 Yeah.
0:22:59 Over about 100 years, there’s great research showing that it has essentially matched inflation.
0:23:01 It’s been slightly above inflation.
0:23:03 People find this mind-boggling.
0:23:07 Again, because they think somebody bought a house for 100K and they sold it for a million
0:23:13 and so it’s 900K, but they don’t properly factor in inflation, opportunity cost, phantom
0:23:14 cost, all that.
0:23:19 It’s really hard to factor these numbers in, but it’s critical because it’s the biggest
0:23:20 purchase of your life.
0:23:26 I’ll give you another example of where people don’t properly factor it in.
0:23:28 Some people pay a financial advisor 1%.
0:23:29 They go, “1%.
0:23:30 It’s not a big deal.
0:23:31 I’ll pay 1%.
0:23:38 What they don’t realize is that that 1% over the course of their lifetime will take 28%
0:23:43 of their returns and hand them over in fees.
0:23:44 Think about it.
0:23:48 If you make a million dollars in investing over the course of your life, $280,000 are
0:23:52 going right out of your pocket into that advisor’s pocket.
0:23:54 Now, that’s super counterintuitive.
0:23:56 1% turns into 28%.
0:23:58 How does it work?
0:24:03 You can simply go online and search for investment cost calculator and plug in the numbers at
0:24:06 a 1% fee and you will see.
0:24:12 The point of this is that sometimes money is highly counterintuitive, really counterintuitive.
0:24:13 It’s unlike anything else.
0:24:21 If you and I go to sushi right now and we get sushi for 20 bucks, it’ll be fine.
0:24:24 If we get it for 100 bucks, what do you think?
0:24:25 Probably be a little better, right?
0:24:30 If we get it for $1000, the fish will have been flown in from Tokyo this morning and
0:24:34 it will be served in an absolutely stunning setting.
0:24:38 So in other words, you pay more, you get better results.
0:24:39 We’re used to that.
0:24:42 If I spend more on a sweater, it’s probably going to have a different type of fabric.
0:24:46 More on a car, it’s going to look cooler, have cooler features.
0:24:47 Money’s not like that.
0:24:52 If you spend more, you don’t get better returns.
0:24:54 You don’t get better anything.
0:24:58 In fact, if anything, you get worse returns.
0:25:03 People find this mind boggling because it is, it’s counterintuitive, but in investing
0:25:04 costs matter.
0:25:10 In buying a house, you’ve got to run the numbers because they are totally counterintuitive.
0:25:14 So what is the S&P 500 for anybody that doesn’t know?
0:25:19 And what are the returns that I’m likely to get from investing in the S&P 500?
0:25:22 I really want to simplify this for people that are at the very start of their investing
0:25:23 journey.
0:25:27 You know, because, I mean, this is what you spend so much of your time doing, that I just
0:25:31 think about my team here, sitting at the Diary of a CEO, there’s about 30 people, and we
0:25:36 started talking about money one day, and it was mind blowing how nobody in my team’s
0:25:40 lives had ever had the conversation with them about investing.
0:25:45 We all think of investing as something that rich people after the age of 40 do once you
0:25:50 have a million dollars, or if you don’t have a million dollars, then the only other way
0:25:54 to invest we’re taught is to buy a house.
0:25:55 This is driving me insane.
0:25:56 It’s true, though, isn’t it?
0:26:03 Yes, and that’s the central part of my work, is that you can live a rich life, and that
0:26:08 rich life can be richer and more vibrant and more personal than you ever imagined.
0:26:12 If you want to travel, you can travel for longer than you ever thought.
0:26:16 You can travel, for me, at nicer hotels.
0:26:20 You can spend more time with your children, with your loved ones, whatever your rich life
0:26:27 is, you can do that, but you’ve got to learn a few key basic things about investing and
0:26:28 money.
0:26:31 Let me tell you what I would tell my family when they come to me, they go, “How should
0:26:33 I start investing?”
0:26:39 The simplest way that I advise my family is I say, “Get a target date fund.”
0:26:41 Let me explain what that is.
0:26:47 A target date fund is one fund, just one, and you pick it based on the year that you’re
0:26:49 going to retire.
0:26:56 If you’re going to retire in 2050, if you’re going to be 65 in 2050, you go and you find
0:26:57 that one fund.
0:27:03 It’s called a Vanguard 2065 fund or Fidelity 2065 or Schwab 2065.
0:27:05 There’s lots of brokers.
0:27:09 These funds, it’s one fund, all you do is put money into it.
0:27:10 That’s it.
0:27:14 One fund, like a pie chart, is automatically diversified.
0:27:20 As you get older, it gets more conservative because somebody who’s 75 years old should
0:27:23 be investing differently than someone who’s 25.
0:27:28 One fund, all you have to do is set your money up to go into it every single month.
0:27:29 What is a fund?
0:27:37 A fund is a set or a basket of stocks and maybe bonds.
0:27:42 We’ve all heard of companies like Microsoft, Google, whatever.
0:27:45 A fund owns lots of these.
0:27:48 That’s important because we’ve heard diversification.
0:27:50 You should have diversified your investments.
0:27:52 Okay, well, how do I do that?
0:27:57 You don’t need to go and buy 20 stocks and then figure out how much of each to do.
0:27:58 That’s too much work.
0:28:01 Honestly, most people are not good at that.
0:28:02 Even professionals.
0:28:09 You buy a fund which automatically owns lots of stocks, like hundreds of them.
0:28:15 Over time, all you, the individual investor, like me, have to focus on is putting money
0:28:16 into it automatically.
0:28:20 A fund, essentially, I’ve got 100 pounds that I want to invest.
0:28:21 I find a fund.
0:28:23 Why do I find these funds?
0:28:25 You can go to Vanguard, Schwab, or Fidelity.
0:28:27 All those are great companies.
0:28:30 What you’re looking for, regardless of what country you’re in, is you’re looking for
0:28:33 a low-cost brokerage firm.
0:28:35 There’s also apps and stuff that I can use.
0:28:36 You can use apps.
0:28:41 I don’t like a lot of the apps because they gamify you to try to invest.
0:28:44 They want you clicking and trading.
0:28:46 I hate traders.
0:28:48 You do not want to be a trader.
0:28:50 Traders lose money.
0:28:53 Investors treat investing like watching paint dry.
0:28:55 That’s how sexy it is.
0:28:57 Trust me, I’m not getting my entertainment from investing.
0:28:58 I’m going out.
0:28:59 Go watch a movie.
0:29:05 Netflix, but investing is boring and automatic.
0:29:06 That’s how it should be.
0:29:10 I used a company called Hargreaves Lans down in the UK who have an app.
0:29:16 When I first started investing, in funds, they had a very ugly app, so I wasn’t very
0:29:17 compelled to use it.
0:29:21 I think it’s better now, but I would just do it on desktop, which I do get your point
0:29:23 because you don’t want to be game.
0:29:25 You don’t want to screen all of that notification.
0:29:26 I like ugly.
0:29:27 It should be ugly.
0:29:29 You don’t want it to be too accessible.
0:29:31 I don’t want to be able to check it every day.
0:29:34 On my phone, you will see no investing apps.
0:29:35 There should not be.
0:29:37 Why do you need to log in and check it every day?
0:29:38 What’s the point?
0:29:45 In fact, most people should check it every three to six months, and here’s how you check
0:29:46 it.
0:29:52 You log in on your desktop, wow, it’s up, wow, it’s down, okay, bye.
0:29:54 You’re not tweaking anything.
0:29:56 It’s like making Thanksgiving dinner.
0:30:00 Once you’ve put the turkey in the oven, just let it sit.
0:30:04 Do not fiddle with it because you’re only going to mess it up, and in this case, you’re
0:30:07 letting the turkey cook for decades.
0:30:08 That fun.
0:30:09 I’ve got 100 pounds.
0:30:10 I go on a website.
0:30:14 Vanguard, Fidelity Schwab, whatever they are, I have no alliance to any of them.
0:30:15 Neither do I.
0:30:16 There’s various ones in the UK.
0:30:19 I actually do recommend Hargreaves Lansdown just because it’s simple, and I think investing
0:30:23 in funds, there’s no fees, there’s no fee associated with the investment itself.
0:30:26 Obviously, they might take a percentage, depending on which fund you’re investing in.
0:30:36 I take my 100 pounds, and investing in Hargreaves Lansdown, there’s no minimum from what I understand.
0:30:39 If you invest in a stock, they charge 12 pounds per investment, but if you invest in a fund,
0:30:40 it’s free.
0:30:42 I put my 100 pounds into a fund.
0:30:46 The fund is essentially taking one pounds, one of those pounds, and investing one pound
0:30:47 into Facebook.
0:30:50 It’s investing one pound into Google, one pound into Shopify, one pound into Spotify,
0:30:53 one pound into NVIDIA or whatever.
0:30:54 It’s doing that for me.
0:30:55 It’s managing it for me.
0:30:56 It’s making the decisions for me.
0:31:01 I just put the money in every month, whatever I can, and I leave it.
0:31:02 Yeah.
0:31:04 Let’s go even deeper.
0:31:08 I love that we’re getting into the nuts and bolts here, because honestly, most people,
0:31:11 they do not know how to invest.
0:31:15 Literally what website do I go to, and then what do I do?
0:31:20 The fund owns these different stocks, and some will go up and some will go down, and
0:31:23 it’s inconsequential to you.
0:31:26 All you need to know is you own this fund.
0:31:32 Now that you’ve opened up an account and you’ve sent 100 bucks or 1,000 bucks, great.
0:31:34 You’ve made one of the most important decisions of your life.
0:31:36 There’s just one more thing you have to do.
0:31:41 Set up an automatic transfer so that every single month you have a certain amount of
0:31:43 money going in.
0:31:47 If you don’t know how much money, use my Conscious Spending Plan guideline.
0:31:48 What did I say?
0:31:53 5% to 10% of take home is a good guideline.
0:31:56 You should be able to do 5%, trust me.
0:31:58 Anyone who comes to me, they go, “Rameet, there’s no way.
0:31:59 Must be nice.
0:32:00 I can’t afford it.”
0:32:01 I go, “Show me where you’re spending your money.
0:32:04 I guarantee you I can find 5% to send in every month.”
0:32:07 Now, you’re not trying to send it in.
0:32:10 I don’t try to brush my teeth in the morning.
0:32:12 It’s a habit.
0:32:15 Investing is even easier than brushing your teeth, because you set it up automatically.
0:32:22 The investment fund will automatically draw from your checking account, and it will pull
0:32:27 in 100 bucks, 500 bucks, 1,000 bucks, whatever your number is.
0:32:29 You’re not going to log in for three, four, five months.
0:32:31 You’re going to log in a few months later.
0:32:33 You’re going to be like, “Oh my God.
0:32:38 I didn’t even realize that all this money is in here.”
0:32:44 When you add that plus compounding over many years, that is how real wealth is created.
0:32:50 I don’t want anyone to think that you have to be rich in order to start investing.
0:32:54 One of the ways you get rich is by investing.
0:32:57 I’ve got a friend that’s currently actually in this building at the moment, and I had
0:33:04 this conversation with them about a year ago, gave the advice that you’ve just given there.
0:33:09 About two months later, this individual, who I shan’t name, came to me and I said, “How’s
0:33:13 your investments going in that fund?”
0:33:14 They said, “Oh yeah.
0:33:15 I had bills.
0:33:17 I had a credit card bill, so I took it out.”
0:33:18 Yeah.
0:33:20 She treated it like a checking account.
0:33:24 Investments for me are places to accumulate wealth.
0:33:26 I don’t draw from it.
0:33:29 That’s what a checking account is for.
0:33:32 What that is, is there’s two parts to what your friend is saying.
0:33:38 One is mentally, she’s thinking that this investment account is just money I can draw
0:33:39 from if I need it.
0:33:42 I would gently change the way she thinks about it.
0:33:49 The second is, I guarantee her account structure is a little sub par.
0:33:51 Here’s how I would set it up.
0:33:53 This is in chapter five.
0:33:57 It’s all automation, because trust me, I don’t want to spend time transferring money back
0:33:58 and forth.
0:34:01 I don’t spend any time on that.
0:34:02 You get paid.
0:34:03 Your money goes into your checking account.
0:34:09 From your checking account, it is automatically transferred to a savings account.
0:34:16 In fact, I have sub savings accounts for vacation, car, down payment, all that stuff.
0:34:19 You have money set up for specific goals.
0:34:21 Money is transferred to your investment account.
0:34:23 It’s transferred there.
0:34:24 I’m not going to touch that money.
0:34:26 I’m going to let it cook.
0:34:31 Then I have my guilt-free spending, which is going out with friends, whatever I love,
0:34:35 and my credit card bill is automatically paid off every single month.
0:34:37 That’s how you want to set it up.
0:34:41 It takes a couple of weeks to set everything up, and then you never have to think about
0:34:43 it again.
0:34:45 How can you prove to me that this is the way to make wealth?
0:34:48 What case studies have you got that investing in funds?
0:34:55 Over a long period of time is the path to financial wealth.
0:34:57 You said earlier about the paint-drying thing.
0:35:01 The narrative that we see about why people and how people get rich is they sell a company,
0:35:07 or they have a lottery win, or maybe they buy some cryptocurrency, and it goes up.
0:35:08 That’s what we hear.
0:35:09 That’s what we hear.
0:35:10 That’s what we try and emulate.
0:35:11 Totally.
0:35:14 Prove to me that this fun strategy is better.
0:35:15 Well, there’s a couple of things.
0:35:23 First off, the research over about 100 years shows the returns of the stock market.
0:35:31 The returns tend to be, at least in America, they tend to be around 11%, 10 to 11%, and
0:35:37 if you take out inflation, you get about 7% to 8% per year.
0:35:39 For anyone listening, they go, “Okay, well, what does that mean?
0:35:41 That number means nothing to me.”
0:35:43 7%, whatever.
0:35:51 If you go right now and you Google “investment calculator,” and you just plug in your age,
0:35:58 you plug in, let’s say, $200, $300 a month, and you plug in 7% return, and you just watch
0:36:02 how that money grows, you will be shocked.
0:36:03 Jack, get me my phone.
0:36:05 I’m going to do it now.
0:36:10 Okay, so let’s search for “compound interest calculator,” and there’s a really simple one.
0:36:14 It’s called “money chimp.”
0:36:16 Okay, I’ve got it.
0:36:18 All right, so there’s four numbers we need to fill out here.
0:36:19 Let’s take a look.
0:36:20 The first is current principal.
0:36:22 That means how much you’ve got in the bank.
0:36:28 I’m going to say $5,000, and I’m going to start when I was 16, because if I’d saved
0:36:36 my money when I was 16 and not spent it recklessly, I think I could have had that $5,000 when
0:36:37 I was 16.
0:36:38 Annual addition, what does that mean?
0:36:41 How much can you invest per year?
0:36:44 For most people, they think about on a monthly basis.
0:36:49 They might say $200 a month, which would be $2,400 annual addition.
0:36:53 Okay, so I’m going to say, can I say $5,000?
0:36:56 Yeah, that’s about $400 a month.
0:36:57 I think that’s reasonable.
0:37:03 I often find that with people making median or slightly above median salary that there
0:37:09 are hundreds of dollars a month of money that is unaccounted for, that if properly made
0:37:11 intentional could be invested.
0:37:12 So great, $5,000 a year.
0:37:13 All right.
0:37:17 Obviously, once I got past a certain age, I could have increased that, though.
0:37:18 We’re going to talk about that.
0:37:19 Okay.
0:37:20 Hold on to that idea.
0:37:21 Okay.
0:37:22 How many years?
0:37:23 This was you at 20?
0:37:24 This was me at 16.
0:37:25 Oh, okay.
0:37:26 And how old are you today?
0:37:27 30.
0:37:28 Okay.
0:37:29 So 14 years.
0:37:30 Let’s just do it until today, and we’ll see what happens.
0:37:31 Okay.
0:37:32 All right.
0:37:33 14 years.
0:37:34 Let’s just rate.
0:37:35 So what should we assume for that?
0:37:36 Is that 8%?
0:37:37 Yeah, 7 to 8.
0:37:43 I do 7 just to be super conservative because I never want to be surprised on the downside.
0:37:45 If anything, I’m going to make more.
0:37:46 So 7%.
0:37:47 All right.
0:37:48 Let’s calculate it.
0:37:49 Okay.
0:37:50 What do you see?
0:37:51 Damn.
0:37:53 What do you see?
0:37:54 $133,537.
0:37:55 Yeah.
0:37:58 That’s what you would have had right now.
0:38:01 Now, let’s add some context.
0:38:02 So this is really important.
0:38:07 You see a number that says $133,000 at age 30.
0:38:08 Yeah.
0:38:09 Okay.
0:38:10 Is that a lot?
0:38:11 Is that not?
0:38:12 Hmm.
0:38:13 I don’t know.
0:38:14 Let’s break it down.
0:38:20 At that point, you started with $5,000, and you invested $5,000 per year.
0:38:26 We assumed no raises, even though you obviously made more than you made at age 16.
0:38:33 We assumed you stopped investing at age 30, which is obviously ridiculous, and you end
0:38:35 up with six figures.
0:38:37 Let’s play it out.
0:38:41 Let’s take it until 40.
0:38:45 So instead of 14 years, you invested for 24 years.
0:38:47 What do you see?
0:38:51 I would have $336,000.
0:38:52 It’s getting better.
0:38:54 From just $5,000 a year.
0:38:55 It’s not much.
0:38:56 It’s fantastic.
0:39:00 $400 or so a month is very modest.
0:39:05 Remember, people’s income goes up, typically in their 30s and 40s, and if you already are
0:39:08 investing a little bit automatically, all you have to do is just tweak a number, and
0:39:12 it will take an extra couple hundred, three, four, 500 bucks.
0:39:13 Let’s do one more.
0:39:16 Let’s go to 34 years just because I want to see what happens, and then we’re going to
0:39:17 play with the other numbers.
0:39:18 Okay.
0:39:28 So investing from the age of 16 until I’m 50, I would have $736,000 in my account.
0:39:31 Now I want to do the full thing.
0:39:34 I want to do a more realistic number here.
0:39:40 So instead of 50, we’re going to go 49 years.
0:39:48 That takes you to age 65, and instead of $5,000 per year, your income obviously went up from
0:39:49 being 16 years old.
0:39:55 So I’m going to pick a number out of thin air, and I’m going to tell you how I picked
0:39:56 it.
0:40:02 I’m going to say instead of $5,000 a year, it’s actually going to be $30,000 per year.
0:40:05 Let me tell you why I picked that.
0:40:08 In your early years, you don’t have as much money, but you were still investing a little
0:40:10 bit which shows that you’re dedicated.
0:40:16 As your income goes up, you’re going to start proportionally continuing to invest.
0:40:20 So at a certain point, your income would be really high, and that will bring that average
0:40:21 up.
0:40:23 That’s why I switched it to $30,000 per year.
0:40:29 I actually think this is quite modest, but I’m going to go ahead and do it.
0:40:32 So here we have someone starting investing at $5,000.
0:40:37 They invest $30,000 per year, okay?
0:40:41 They grow it for 49 years at 7%.
0:40:42 Do you know the math?
0:40:43 No.
0:40:44 Tell me.
0:40:49 That’s $12,303,000.
0:40:55 So that’s me starting with 5K, gradually ratcheting it up until I’m investing, well,
0:40:59 investing $30,000 a year per average across those 49 years.
0:41:02 Yes, which is a flaw in this because it’s so simple.
0:41:05 That money invested, you’re not actually going to invest that much early on.
0:41:10 You’ll invest more later, so you won’t actually, you’ll maybe have a marginal amount less,
0:41:13 but we’re talking 10 versus $12,000,000.
0:41:15 That’s a lot of money.
0:41:20 And then if I got 8%, instead of the 7%, I’d have 17.4 million.
0:41:23 Yeah, but don’t mess with that because this is what people do.
0:41:27 They go, “Well, if I got 13%, I’m going to invest in this PE fund.”
0:41:28 I go, “Don’t do that.
0:41:29 You’re going to lose all your money.
0:41:30 Just stop.”
0:41:31 Yeah.
0:41:32 7% is safe.
0:41:33 It’s conservative.
0:41:34 That’s why I am here.
0:41:35 That’s why I want to encourage people.
0:41:37 You don’t need to juice your returns.
0:41:41 I hope you do get 8%, but I don’t want you to count on that.
0:41:48 I want you to count on safe, stable returns, and what matters for you is the time you started
0:41:53 early and the amount you have a considerable amount to invest.
0:41:56 What about the richest people in the world?
0:42:00 We think of the Warren Buffett’s of the world or the Charlie Mungers of the world who ended
0:42:03 up becoming the richest investors on planet Earth.
0:42:04 What was their strategy?
0:42:05 I’ll tell you.
0:42:06 Let’s talk about Warren Buffett.
0:42:08 There’s a friend of mine, Morgan Housel.
0:42:09 He wrote this amazing article.
0:42:10 I love that book.
0:42:11 Yeah.
0:42:14 He wrote this amazing article about Warren Buffett.
0:42:21 If you look at Warren Buffett’s returns, he started investing at a very young age and
0:42:22 the money compounded.
0:42:26 Again, it’s like putting the turkey in the oven and letting it sit there, not just for
0:42:28 an hour, but many hours.
0:42:32 In his case, 60 plus years.
0:42:41 He has made over 90, I think over 99% of his wealth happened over the age of 60.
0:42:42 Think about that.
0:42:46 It’s all because he started investing so far ago.
0:42:50 What is mind boggling is that you don’t need a fancy strategy.
0:42:52 You don’t need to be picking individual stocks.
0:42:54 You don’t even need to be a genius.
0:42:58 To make a lot of money, you do not have to be the smartest person in the room.
0:43:01 You just need to remember a few key things.
0:43:04 Start as early as possible.
0:43:09 If you’re not 16 years old, if you’re 30, 40, even 45, okay.
0:43:10 Start now.
0:43:14 Second, invest aggressively every single month.
0:43:15 That’s critical.
0:43:17 Third, keep your costs low.
0:43:20 1% in fees is going to take 28% of your returns.
0:43:24 2% is going to take over 55% of your returns.
0:43:27 Keep your costs low.
0:43:31 If you do those things, you will have more money than you ever imagined.
0:43:35 What are the attributes of someone that’s probably going to be poor in 30 years in terms
0:43:38 of their relationship and their behavior with their money?
0:43:39 They’re easy.
0:43:40 They don’t invest.
0:43:45 They feel overwhelmed and anxious about money, and they talk about it all the time, but they’ve
0:43:50 never read a single book about money.
0:43:52 There’s these deeper attributes they have.
0:43:54 Only rich people invest.
0:43:55 They think that.
0:43:56 Yeah.
0:43:57 That’s why I’m here.
0:44:04 I want everyday people to know, just like me, I started off my parents immigrated from India.
0:44:12 I had no special investment knowledge, but I had two parents who were educated and encouraged
0:44:13 me and said, “Learn this stuff.
0:44:18 Here, we’ll do it together,” and that was a gift.
0:44:23 Everyday people can build tremendous wealth, which in and of itself is impressive, but
0:44:28 it’s even more impressive when that wealth is used to live a rich life, a rich life of
0:44:31 adventure and spontaneity and generosity.
0:44:36 Some of the stats I pulled out from your book, about 25% of people who make $100,000 a year
0:44:40 plus are still living paycheck to paycheck.
0:44:47 According to a recent survey of millionaires done by the US Trust, 83% of the wealthy say
0:44:52 their largest investment gains have come from small wins over time rather than taking
0:44:53 big risks.
0:44:54 Yes.
0:44:58 This is counter to everything we see on TV, because on TV, it’s really boring.
0:45:00 What are you going to look at my Vanguard account?
0:45:02 Oh, wow, compounding 7% per year.
0:45:06 It went down 8% last year, and it went up 9% this year.
0:45:07 So boring.
0:45:12 So we see these cool stories of business owners, and we’re both business owners.
0:45:20 It is cool, but a tremendous amount of my own wealth will come from low-cost, long-term
0:45:22 methodical investing.
0:45:27 It’s like a rule of life, isn’t it, that the real returns, in reality, the great returns
0:45:33 come from patience and consistency, and things that really aren’t sexy.
0:45:34 They’re not Instagramable.
0:45:38 If I post on my Instagram today, “Hey, I’ve got some advice for you guys to become wealthy,”
0:45:41 and I go, “You need to invest in this fund and just leave it there.”
0:45:45 But if I go, “Listen, I’ve got this new NFT collection, or cryptocurrency coin that’s
0:45:49 going to make you a million percent this year,” people are going to go all in.
0:45:56 That’s just something within the human condition, where we want big returns, with little effort,
0:45:57 and today.
0:45:58 We want to get rich quick.
0:45:59 Same with a six-pack.
0:46:01 We want the six-pack abs in 10 minutes.
0:46:06 We don’t want six-pack abs with diet restrictions and nine months of work.
0:46:07 That’s not…
0:46:12 And that is why I have a lot of compassion for helping people unlearn some of the messages
0:46:15 about money, because we all have them.
0:46:18 We all have the equivalent of, “I want six-pack abs.”
0:46:23 But we also have something in life that we’ve spent time to get really good at, and we know
0:46:26 that the secret is basically consistency.
0:46:30 If I go ask someone who’s an amazing cook, “Hey, I want to cook like you.
0:46:31 How do I do it?”
0:46:32 What are they going to give me?
0:46:33 Use cinnamon.
0:46:34 No!
0:46:37 They’re going to say, “Get in the kitchen and cook every single day for five years, and
0:46:41 you’re going to learn about when to use salt and when to cook it for longer.”
0:46:42 Fitness.
0:46:46 You want to ask someone who looks really good or feels really good about their body?
0:46:47 They’re going to give you some secret workout?
0:46:51 No, they’re going to say, “I show up when I feel good.
0:46:53 I show up when I don’t.
0:46:54 I show up.”
0:46:56 Let’s think about the people that might be listening now.
0:47:03 So there’s going to be someone that is a bus driver, or they are a social media manager,
0:47:10 they are a cleaner, they’re a teacher, they are a personal trainer.
0:47:17 If your job was to make that person a millionaire in 20 years from now, whatever your age they
0:47:23 are right now, and you were their financial advisor, in fact, you were controlling all
0:47:27 of their personal, professional decisions, talk me through what you would do with that
0:47:29 individual at a very detailed level.
0:47:31 I would do a few things.
0:47:36 Number one, that the most important things I would do would be set up automatic investing
0:47:38 and be aggressive about it.
0:47:40 Two, they have to increase their income.
0:47:41 Okay, I’m going to be that person.
0:47:43 I’m going to embody that person I just described.
0:47:44 So increase my income.
0:47:45 I’m a personal trainer.
0:47:46 Perfect.
0:47:47 So what shall I do?
0:47:48 All right.
0:47:49 You’re a personal trainer.
0:47:51 So first off, I would say, “How much are you charging?
0:47:53 How are you finding your clients?”
0:47:54 We talk about that.
0:47:58 And let’s say you’re charging $100 an hour, and you have clients that say, “How long
0:47:59 do they stay on average?”
0:48:01 That’s exactly what I’m charging.
0:48:02 Two months.
0:48:03 Perfect.
0:48:04 Great.
0:48:05 They stay longer than two months.
0:48:06 I’m very good.
0:48:07 How long do they stay?
0:48:08 Three months.
0:48:09 Three months.
0:48:10 Wow.
0:48:11 Okay.
0:48:12 You’re very good.
0:48:13 All right.
0:48:15 So your average client is worth a few thousand bucks.
0:48:16 Yeah.
0:48:21 So you’re making, let’s say, $60,000, $70,000 a year.
0:48:22 All right.
0:48:26 The first thing, after I understand all this information, I would say, “All right, we’re
0:48:28 going to double your income.
0:48:30 How are we going to do that?”
0:48:33 The first answer everyone gives is, “I’ve got to find more clients.”
0:48:34 Okay.
0:48:35 You should.
0:48:37 You should ask your clients, “Hey, I’ve got a few slots available.
0:48:38 Who would you recommend?”
0:48:40 So you should get more clients.
0:48:44 Second, you’re going to listen to your clients, and you’re going to say, “What else are you
0:48:45 looking for?
0:48:47 You’ve got your fitness journey you’re going on.”
0:48:50 They’re going to tell you, “I’ve got a 10-year reunion.
0:48:52 I want to plan for that.”
0:48:57 Another person is going to say, “Gosh, I know I should be eating healthier, but it’s really
0:48:58 hard for me.”
0:48:59 So you’re thinking about it.
0:49:01 Here’s what you do.
0:49:05 You create, you package up meal planning services.
0:49:10 You can either do their macros for them and charge them a little bit extra.
0:49:15 Let’s say an extra 200 bucks a week or 200 bucks a month.
0:49:19 You can also partner with a food delivery service, and you coordinate with that company
0:49:23 to feed over their macros, and it gets delivered to them, and you take a small cut.
0:49:29 Right there, you’ve added thousands and thousands of dollars per year per client as long as
0:49:30 they stick with you.
0:49:34 In addition to that, you can do group sessions.
0:49:37 So you go, “Hey, I’m going to do a weekend session.
0:49:39 I’d like for you to invite your friends.
0:49:41 Get them for free.”
0:49:44 And of course, of the people who come, let’s say you get 15, 20 people to come.
0:49:46 You do a free little session on Saturday.
0:49:47 You go, “I’m a trainer.
0:49:49 I work in Soho.
0:49:51 I have three open slots.”
0:49:53 That’s how you’re finding new clients now.
0:49:54 So you’re doing two things.
0:49:55 You’re finding new clients.
0:50:00 You’re increasing your average lifetime value per client.
0:50:01 That’s two things.
0:50:03 Now let’s do one last thing.
0:50:06 Let’s increase the duration that they stick with you.
0:50:08 They’re sticking with you for three months.
0:50:10 Even a special offer to stay with you for six months.
0:50:12 So when they sign up, they work out with you for a month.
0:50:14 You say, “Look, it’s a hundred bucks right now.
0:50:20 If you stick with me for a six-month plan, I will give you my sessions at $95 per plan.
0:50:22 You’ll save X5 percent.”
0:50:24 One, two, three.
0:50:25 You’ve increased.
0:50:28 And if we did the math, you may have doubled your revenue.
0:50:31 You certainly boosted your profit in a huge way.
0:50:36 A lot of that’s about making sure you’re getting a better return per hour you spend at work,
0:50:37 but also making sure all of those hours are full.
0:50:41 Then doubling down and making sure each hour, because that’s your currency when you’re a
0:50:42 personal trainer.
0:50:44 You’re trading in your time.
0:50:47 I need to make the most from every hour I spend.
0:50:51 I thought about something recently as I’ve been writing my new book, The Diary of a CEO,
0:50:55 which I’ve written these 33 laws for building and becoming great, essentially.
0:50:57 It goes across marketing and business and whatever.
0:51:02 And one of the chapters that I investigate is this idea of making sure your skills are
0:51:04 on the right market.
0:51:09 So my company went public and one of the things that I came to learn from sitting with investment
0:51:14 bankers for many, many years was that if you put a company, the exact same company, let’s
0:51:19 just say it’s the company that make these silver mugs in front of me, if I take this
0:51:25 company public on the London Stock Exchange, I might get, for example, four times revenue.
0:51:29 If I take the exact same company and I list it on the New York Stock Exchange, it will
0:51:32 be valued at eight times revenue.
0:51:36 It’s the exact same company, exact same people, exact same business, just moving it to a
0:51:37 different market.
0:51:43 And upon leaving the social media marketing world when I was 27 years old, one of the
0:51:47 first calls I got was from a biotech company ran by a billionaire friend of mine that was
0:51:50 going public and they brought me in.
0:51:54 And on the first week when we were discussing what they might pay me, I’m thinking, they
0:51:57 can’t really pay me in cash because I’ve got enough cash, I don’t really need that.
0:51:59 They can maybe give me some stock.
0:52:05 Their offer to me for my skill set was eight million dollars, roughly eight million dollars
0:52:09 in options that I would earn in nine months from taking the company from where it was,
0:52:13 building out the marketing team, handling the storytelling and taking the company public
0:52:17 which we did at about 3.2 billion valuation.
0:52:19 Their offer was eight million dollars in options.
0:52:25 I reflect on that and go, I’d spent the previous 10 years using the same skill set to sell consumer
0:52:29 goods like dresses and iPhones for Apple and Logitech and big fashion brands.
0:52:36 I took the same skill set and applied it to a market and industry where it was rare.
0:52:40 Biotech people know nothing about Reddit and Twitter and Facebook and social media.
0:52:44 So my skill set was rare, scarce in that market, so it was incredibly valuable.
0:52:49 And I think about this a lot with, especially as this AI thing rolls in, I think people
0:52:53 should be looking at their skill sets and going, where is my skill set as a writer going
0:52:54 to yield the greatest returns?
0:53:02 I could be a social media manager, I could be a blog writer, or I could add a little
0:53:09 boat string to my boat and become a scientific writer or work a writer in Biotech and you’ll
0:53:13 get paid, if you can add that little bit of knowledge to your writing skills, you’ll
0:53:18 get paid, I’m going to say five times, potentially five times more.
0:53:23 And people don’t think about the fact that they need to place their skill sets in the
0:53:26 most lucrative market where it’s scarce.
0:53:30 And so, yeah, just throwing that out there because it’s really front of mind for me at
0:53:31 the moment.
0:53:32 It’s great.
0:53:33 Plus the training.
0:53:34 Personal training.
0:53:37 You could be at a gym and you’ll lose 75% of your income to the gym or…
0:53:39 You can do it virtually.
0:53:46 You can specialize on just preparing people in the beginning of the year, it’s like your
0:53:49 best year and every January, that is your focus.
0:53:57 It can be celebrity clients, it can be uptown, mid-career executives, that’s a very lucrative.
0:54:00 You choose, but you choose carefully.
0:54:01 I agree.
0:54:02 That’s a bit of an advanced concept.
0:54:05 I think most people, they start off, they go, “Just how do I make more money?”
0:54:10 I’m a trainer, I have free hours, but once you kind of master that and you go, like,
0:54:14 for example, there’s a trainer I know here who charges 175 bucks an hour.
0:54:16 That’s very good.
0:54:19 After you get that and you fill up your entire calendar, you go, “Okay.
0:54:22 I’m making $305,000 a year.
0:54:23 I want to make more.
0:54:24 How do I do it?”
0:54:26 Now you need to get creative.
0:54:27 You move to different markets.
0:54:30 You add in packaged things that scale when you sleep.
0:54:32 You have video courses, et cetera.
0:54:35 There’s so many different ways, but I think everyone would do well to listen to what you’re
0:54:40 saying, which is think about how to move upmarket or potentially to a totally different market.
0:54:43 Where your skill set is really scarce.
0:54:48 That’s the problem a lot of people have, their skill set might be too abundant in the industry.
0:54:50 Like social media managers.
0:54:54 Social media managers is one thing, but that’s a slightly different skill set because there’s
0:54:57 a wealth of knowledge there that is unique to that, knowing the algorithms, knowing the
0:54:58 platforms.
0:55:02 There’s a real creative element to it, but I think about my friend, Anthony.
0:55:04 He was a graphic designer.
0:55:09 The greatest graphic designer I ever knew in Manchester, but he was designing nightclub
0:55:10 flyers.
0:55:11 He’s talked about this publicly before.
0:55:17 Every nightclub fly he designed, he got $50, the equivalent, $50 to $100, right?
0:55:22 I had a conversation with him a couple of years ago about this and I said, you’re really
0:55:25 specifically good at like luxury design.
0:55:30 He’s got that really like beautiful, chic, simple, but you know, elegant design style.
0:55:33 You always go to him whenever any design work like that.
0:55:44 So I said to him, move to Dubai and go there and help design luxury brands.
0:55:45 And this guy did it.
0:55:50 So he went from Manchester, where he was doing nightclub flies, to moving to Dubai.
0:55:56 And without revealing his financial position, what I can say is the same hour per piece
0:56:03 of work is now yielding him 10s and 10s more in returns, you know, instead of getting $500,
0:56:07 he’s getting $50,000 for a project.
0:56:11 And it’s just moving his skillset, the same thing, designing on the same software to a
0:56:14 different industry, which will appreciate and pay him more for the same skill.
0:56:21 The lesson I take away from that beyond his willingness to actually make a change, which
0:56:27 is amazing, is that most of us do not think in terms of discontinuous jumps.
0:56:32 We think, okay, I’m making, I have 100 bucks a month.
0:56:35 What if I had 120 bucks a month?
0:56:37 Well, 20% is like quite good.
0:56:38 That’s amazing.
0:56:42 But what if I had 500 bucks a month or 5,000?
0:56:43 That’s a discontinuous jump.
0:56:50 And to get those kind of numbers, something big has to change in business, moving markets,
0:56:55 developing a new skill, partnering, all those things, but it’s different in investing.
0:56:57 It’s primarily time.
0:56:59 And that’s where we’re not attuned to it.
0:57:02 We go, well, you know, I only have like a couple hundred bucks a month to invest.
0:57:03 That’s nothing.
0:57:04 It’s only going to turn into a few thousand.
0:57:10 You go, no, you’re not thinking about time because the human mind is not made for compounding.
0:57:14 So plug it into a calculator and you will be blown away.
0:57:16 Same thing, buying a house.
0:57:21 You’re only thinking of how expensive your rent is, which granted, rents are very expensive,
0:57:27 but you’re not actually factoring in how much time and money it costs to pay taxes and
0:57:29 maintenance and interest on your loan.
0:57:33 You’ve got to get smart about running the numbers.
0:57:38 And when you start to sit back, when you learn the basic language of money and you understand
0:57:45 how you feel about money, whether it be I like status or I like luxury, or I don’t really
0:57:51 care about X, Y, Z, when you understand your own feelings, suddenly you can almost look
0:57:56 at the chessboard, dispassionately, you sit back, you go, OK, I see what’s going on here.
0:58:02 I even see how I am a player on the game of life when it comes to money.
0:58:07 And then you start to say the most powerful question of all, what if?
0:58:09 What if I earned more?
0:58:11 What if I spent less?
0:58:16 What if I decided I actually love traveling two months a year or buying a house because
0:58:18 I can decorate it the way I want?
0:58:19 What if, what if, what if?
0:58:23 And then you can start to make moves that line up with your rich life.
0:58:26 Someone comes to you and they say, what about crypto?
0:58:28 I get that question a lot.
0:58:29 What about crypto?
0:58:30 Should I be investing in that?
0:58:34 My friends told me about this new coin and I’m thinking of putting a couple of thousand
0:58:35 pounds into it.
0:58:37 I get this all the time.
0:58:40 Should I invest in that coin that my friend told me about?
0:58:41 So I get this question a lot.
0:58:44 I got it a lot a few years ago.
0:58:45 Let me tell you what happened.
0:58:46 People read the book.
0:58:49 They know that I’m a fan of low-cost, long-term investing.
0:58:54 And then all these crypto nuts grow up and they grow up to be 19 years old.
0:58:59 And they go, oh, Ramit Sethi, such an old guy, such a Luddite.
0:59:00 He doesn’t understand investing.
0:59:02 This is the new future.
0:59:04 Fiat is dead.
0:59:06 I go, I have a couple of questions for you.
0:59:10 Number one, what is the rest of your portfolio look like?
0:59:14 They go, portfolio, I put it all in on crypto.
0:59:16 I go, God, okay.
0:59:24 Second, do you think that it’s normal to get a 4,000% return per year when over about
0:59:28 100 years the stock market has returned approximately 7% per year?
0:59:31 They go, yeah, that’s because Fiat is dead, you idiot.
0:59:33 It’s going to be, we’re going to the moon.
0:59:35 I go, you’re going bankrupt.
0:59:38 And many of them did lose a tremendous amount of money.
0:59:46 My view on crypto is if you have a well-diversified portfolio, well-diversified, and you want
0:59:54 to have a little bit of fun with one, two, even 5% of your portfolio, go ahead.
0:59:58 And that could be crypto, it could be an individual stock, it could be investing in your friends
1:00:02 bar in Brooklyn, it could be whatever you want, but you got to limit your risk.
1:00:08 And what you find is that the type of people who tended to be attracted to crypto tended
1:00:12 to be extremely risk seeking.
1:00:21 And in fact, they saw diversification and risk management as boring for old people.
1:00:23 This game is a marathon.
1:00:27 You want to live a rich life, you want to be living it for 60, 70 years.
1:00:32 I’m not trying to get 10,000% returns and then blow out.
1:00:34 And that’s what happened to many of them.
1:00:39 I mean, part of the problem here is that when we do get our 10,000 returns, 10,000% return
1:00:40 moment.
1:00:42 Yeah, we think it’s going to be 10 million percent if we just…
1:00:44 But we also go tell everybody.
1:00:47 Of course, you never hear anyone saying, let me tell you something.
1:00:48 Thank you for saying that.
1:00:52 I went on Twitter because, you know, I mess around with these crypto guys a lot on Twitter.
1:00:53 I have a great time doing it.
1:00:56 I go, hey, where’d all the crypto bros go?
1:00:59 Everyone seems to have disappeared in 2023.
1:01:00 Where’d you guys go?
1:01:04 And there’s just like crickets where in 2020, they were really coming out, you know, guns
1:01:05 blazing.
1:01:12 I said, if you have lost a lot of money from crypto, send me an email.
1:01:13 I want to share your story.
1:01:14 I’ll keep you anonymous.
1:01:17 I have a lot of people who follow me on social media.
1:01:21 I got less than three responses.
1:01:24 We love to share our successes.
1:01:25 We love it.
1:01:27 We do it with crypto.
1:01:29 We do it with buying a house and selling it for a profit.
1:01:31 We do it with business.
1:01:32 We do it with all that stuff.
1:01:36 But you almost never hear anyone saying, oh my gosh, I bought this.
1:01:40 I sold it for one-fifth the price.
1:01:44 Oh, and by the way, because of the transaction fees associated, I actually lost like 80 percent
1:01:47 of my money, you know, or 85 percent of my money.
1:01:49 You never hear that.
1:01:52 It’s deeply shameful for people to admit that they lost money.
1:01:53 It’s the opposite of status, isn’t it?
1:01:54 Yeah.
1:01:56 And we’re not wired to seek the opposite of status.
1:01:57 Exactly.
1:02:01 We’re not wired to voluntarily bring ourselves down in the tribe.
1:02:02 Exactly.
1:02:03 We are safety seeking.
1:02:05 We are status seeking.
1:02:07 And so this is what happens with money.
1:02:12 That’s why I talk about prenups and why I talk about investing and mistakes.
1:02:16 And all of the above is that I want to shine a light and show people if you are only seeing
1:02:19 the top of the iceberg, all the successes.
1:02:21 Of course you feel like you’re behind.
1:02:24 Of course you feel like everyone knows something you don’t.
1:02:26 But it’s complex.
1:02:28 Some people make good decisions.
1:02:29 Some make poor decisions.
1:02:33 We’ve got to look at them all and then we will understand what’s right for us.
1:02:37 So my position on crypto is I believe in the underlying technology of the blockchain.
1:02:43 And I’ve been a big Ethereum holder for a very, very long time, but it does represent
1:02:49 less than 5% of my portfolio, although I am a very big holder in Ethereum.
1:02:56 And I’ve held it for so long that although I’m at a point of profit right now, I’m well
1:03:02 aware that I could go into the red.
1:03:08 Irrespective of that, A is inconsequential to any decisions like my financial portfolio
1:03:14 at large and B, because of that, I have such a long-term time horizon that I could hold
1:03:17 it for 30, 40 years and I’ve never flinched.
1:03:18 I don’t check the price.
1:03:22 Sometimes I just check my password works, but I’ve never traded.
1:03:24 I have no interest in that.
1:03:28 Remets 10 money rules.
1:03:31 I just want to go through these 10 money rules because you mentioned prenups there and I
1:03:35 was quite curious that number 10 in these rules is marrying the right person.
1:03:41 Let’s start at number one, always have one year of emergency funds.
1:03:45 So for me, one year of emergency fund is conservative.
1:03:47 It’s more conservative than most.
1:03:51 Let’s me sleep at night and I just keep the cash in a savings account.
1:03:53 It’s not under my pillow.
1:03:55 Cash does not mean it’s sitting under my bed.
1:03:56 Please don’t try to rob me.
1:04:02 It’s cash in a savings account, totally liquid, and that’s what it’s for, emergencies.
1:04:07 Rule number two, save 10%, invest 20% of gross annual income.
1:04:11 This is all about the numbers that I shared and being more aggressive with them.
1:04:16 I know that paying myself first now turns into way more later, so I invest aggressively.
1:04:22 Rule three, pay cash for large expenses like engagement rings or big holidays or weddings.
1:04:28 This one is controversial because for the things that are important to me, I don’t want
1:04:31 price to be the number one concern.
1:04:33 If I’d rather save up for it.
1:04:38 When I was in my 20s, before I ever met my wife, I knew one day I would get married and
1:04:42 because I’m Indian, I knew we would have a big wedding and I wanted it to be amazing.
1:04:46 So I started putting money aside every single month automatically.
1:04:50 I do the same thing for trips, house, et cetera.
1:04:54 Rule four, never question spending money on books, appetizers, health, or donating to
1:04:56 a friend’s charity fundraiser.
1:04:58 So the books and the appetizers are a little weird.
1:05:02 I have something called Ramit’s book buying rule, which means if you ever see a book that
1:05:06 you’re even remotely interested in, just buy it.
1:05:07 Don’t ask a question.
1:05:08 Don’t equivocate.
1:05:09 Just get it.
1:05:13 Because if you can learn one thing from that book, it can transform your life.
1:05:16 Appetizers, when I was a kid, we couldn’t afford to eat appetizers.
1:05:19 So we would eat out every six to eight weeks.
1:05:22 If we had a coupon, we’d usually go to a pizza place.
1:05:25 Getting appetizers was inconceivable.
1:05:30 So now, when I eat out, to be able to see one or even two appetizers that look good,
1:05:31 I go, yeah, I’ll take them both.
1:05:34 It feels incredibly rich.
1:05:38 And this is just an example of how our childhood sticks with us.
1:05:40 It feels awesome to be able to do that.
1:05:44 Rule number five, business class flights on flights over four hours long.
1:05:45 Yes.
1:05:48 Again, my money rule is not for anyone else.
1:05:53 When I was in my early 20s, I would get on a flight and I would actually, in my head,
1:05:56 scoff as I was walking from the front of the plane to the back.
1:06:01 I’d be like, why would anyone spend four times the money paying for a first class ticket?
1:06:02 Makes no sense.
1:06:05 We’re all getting to the same place.
1:06:09 I wish instead of disparaging that, I would have gotten curious.
1:06:15 And I wish I would have said, wow, if somebody can afford to get those seats, why would they?
1:06:17 I wonder what they’re spending money on.
1:06:19 Aren’t we all getting to the same place?
1:06:25 And if I had gone from disparagement to curiosity, from D to C, I would have understood that
1:06:28 some people have their office paying for it.
1:06:32 Some people do it for health because they want to get there they want.
1:06:33 They’re back to feel good.
1:06:34 They maybe need to go to a meeting.
1:06:38 And some people just have enough money that they can do what they want.
1:06:43 And when I started to become more curious about money, that opened up my eyes to be able
1:06:49 to spend on certain things and spend extravagantly, but also to realize, wow, maybe I try this
1:06:50 certain type of food once.
1:06:51 Cool.
1:06:52 I don’t need to do it again.
1:06:57 So for me, my money rule so that I don’t have to decide every time I take a flight.
1:06:58 Boom.
1:06:59 This is my guideline.
1:07:00 It’s done.
1:07:01 It’s written.
1:07:02 Never have to think about it again.
1:07:05 Rule six, buy the best and keep it as long as possible.
1:07:06 Yes.
1:07:07 I love this.
1:07:10 I think we all intuitively have this idea of quality over quantity.
1:07:15 But if you look in somebody’s closet or you look at the things in their house, there may
1:07:16 be some incongruity.
1:07:20 So for example, my car is 17 years old.
1:07:22 It’s a good car.
1:07:24 I mean, for me, it was a fine car.
1:07:25 I don’t care.
1:07:27 It rides fine.
1:07:29 It’s a four-door Honda Accord.
1:07:35 I told you, very sensible, long-term, great.
1:07:36 Buy the best.
1:07:37 Keep it for a long time.
1:07:39 It’s the same with clothes.
1:07:40 Those things matter to me.
1:07:41 I like that.
1:07:45 And so I’ll buy something that might seem very expensive, but I’ll keep it for a long
1:07:46 time.
1:07:48 It’s a good car for a long time.
1:07:51 Rule seven, no limit on spending on health or education.
1:07:52 Yeah.
1:07:54 This one is important.
1:07:58 I learned when I was in my 20s and I started training and learning from personal trainers
1:08:01 and nutritionists that I really loved it.
1:08:03 And I also realized that I needed help.
1:08:05 I needed great teachers.
1:08:11 And so eventually I just realized I’m going to give myself unlimited spending on this.
1:08:12 Same for education.
1:08:13 So I’m a teacher.
1:08:15 I teach different programs.
1:08:17 Of course, I’m a student as well.
1:08:22 I want to learn from great teachers from taking accounting classes here at Columbia to buying
1:08:26 every conceivable book and digital program there is.
1:08:29 I’ve given myself the freedom to do that.
1:08:35 And all that came from, I had many scholarships that paid my way through college.
1:08:39 And one of the scholarships set up an account for me at the Stanford bookstore.
1:08:43 So when I walked in there, I could get literally any book I wanted.
1:08:46 It was like Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.
1:08:51 For a guy like me to have unlimited books, it was unbelievable.
1:08:57 And when I graduated from college, I realized that would be going away.
1:09:02 And then I remember having this conversation with myself and saying, “How much would it
1:09:09 really cost to recapture that feeling, that feeling of being able to get anything I wanted?
1:09:10 See a book on the bookshelf?
1:09:11 I’ll get it.”
1:09:14 The answer is really not that much.
1:09:18 So over time that then expanded to health and education.
1:09:24 Health I find really compelling because it’s clearly, clearly the most important foundation
1:09:25 of all of this.
1:09:29 It’s clearly the most lucrative investment any of us could make.
1:09:33 Because everything we’ve described, the rich life, doesn’t exist without that foundation.
1:09:36 So it’s all good investing in your vanguard, but it doesn’t matter at all if you’re going
1:09:38 to die.
1:09:41 If you ask people what’s important to you, they’ll often give you the same answer as
1:09:45 they’ll say, “Relationships, health, maybe travel.”
1:09:46 Korea maybe?
1:09:47 Yeah.
1:09:48 I go, “Okay, let’s take a look at your spending.
1:09:51 Show me where you spend on those things.”
1:09:53 It gets really quiet, really fast.
1:09:59 Now it’s one thing to spend time on relationships and we should, but we can also spend money
1:10:00 to enrich those things.
1:10:08 It might be surprising your niece at a showing of Michael Jackson or it might be surprising
1:10:10 your family by going home and visiting them.
1:10:13 There are lots of ways you can use money to enrich those experiences.
1:10:15 Same for health.
1:10:17 It could be what you buy at the grocery store.
1:10:19 It could be training or a gym membership.
1:10:21 It could be whatever it is that’s meaningful for you.
1:10:27 But if we claim something’s important to us, it sure better show up in our time and our
1:10:28 spending.
1:10:32 Rule number eight, earn enough to work only with people you respect and like.
1:10:34 I love this one.
1:10:40 I decided long ago that I only want to work with people that I like and respect.
1:10:43 So I earn enough money so that I can do that.
1:10:48 And to me, who you surround yourself with matters profoundly.
1:10:52 Ideas seep into your consciousness, values seep in.
1:10:55 If I’m around people who, when I look at the calendar, when I have a meeting with them,
1:10:56 I dread it.
1:10:58 I already know it’s the beginning of the end.
1:11:00 Most of us have to work with our souls though, right?
1:11:01 I say have to.
1:11:02 I shouldn’t use that word.
1:11:07 I don’t like saying have to, but most of us spend most of our lives, especially the early
1:11:10 part of our lives, working with our souls.
1:11:13 We work with people that we may not particularly choose ourselves.
1:11:18 I think that’s probably.
1:11:23 So yes, I built a life where I could make that decision for myself.
1:11:30 I’m the CEO of my business, but I think what is important there is the intentionality behind
1:11:31 it.
1:11:36 It’s like even if I worked at a company, I would be deciding on which division I want
1:11:41 to work in, which boss I want to transfer under based on do I like and do I respect
1:11:43 them.
1:11:44 That’s it.
1:11:45 The intention is there.
1:11:50 Again, these are my rules, not anybody else’s, but if this one strikes you, then the way
1:11:54 that I would interpret this is, wow, who in my life do I not like?
1:11:56 Who do I not respect?
1:11:58 Do I need to be around them?
1:11:59 Maybe it’s not work.
1:12:02 Maybe it’s the friend that I hang out with socially on Saturdays.
1:12:07 Again, we have a choice, not on everything, but in the things we do have a choice.
1:12:09 What a shame if we don’t use it.
1:12:12 Rule number nine, prioritize time outside the spreadsheets.
1:12:13 Yeah.
1:12:20 Too many nerds love a spreadsheet and they go, I got to optimize cell B 43, B 43, never
1:12:22 talk back to me.
1:12:24 I go, all right, look, yes, you need to know your numbers.
1:12:27 Yes, you should be automatically saving and investing.
1:12:28 All that.
1:12:29 Yes.
1:12:30 Do the conscious spending plan.
1:12:32 Point, you won.
1:12:34 The turkey is cooking.
1:12:35 You won.
1:12:40 You know your numbers, turn the page, get out of the spreadsheet.
1:12:42 A rich life is lived outside of the spreadsheet.
1:12:47 So on a personal level, that means I spend less than one hour per month on my finances.
1:12:48 It all runs.
1:12:49 It’s a machine.
1:12:50 It’s a system.
1:12:52 I speak to my wife.
1:12:55 We talk once every couple of weeks about money.
1:13:02 Besides that, do not spend time tweaking because the rich life is lived having conversations
1:13:05 like this, seeing friends, seeing my family.
1:13:12 That’s where I want to live, not tweaking things endlessly for no marginal gain.
1:13:17 Number 10, you mentioned your wife there, marry the right person.
1:13:25 Maybe the most important one of all, marriage is the most consequential financial and relational
1:13:29 decision we ever make, and people, they’re a little weirded out by this rule.
1:13:31 They go, “What does this have to do with money?”
1:13:32 I go, “What do you mean?”
1:13:40 The partner you choose will affect where you live, what you spend on a day-to-day basis,
1:13:45 what type of house you buy if you do, how often you travel, the values if you have children
1:13:48 that you pass down to kids.
1:13:50 Of course it’s important.
1:13:56 And so these are conversations that if you are starting to date, it’s a great time.
1:14:00 There’s natural moments in the dating process or even the relationship process where you
1:14:01 can bring up money.
1:14:04 So it’s like the first time you take a vacation together, take a trip.
1:14:08 You go, “Hey, this is all my mind.
1:14:10 I’d love to just put it out on the table.
1:14:11 Love that you invited me on this trip.
1:14:13 I’m so excited to go.
1:14:18 I’m just curious, how were you thinking about paying for the trip?
1:14:19 Who in your mind pays for it?
1:14:22 How would you see us splitting this?”
1:14:26 That’s a great way to bring it up and you learn a lot about your partner.
1:14:28 There are questions you can naturally ask.
1:14:29 How were you raised with money?
1:14:31 What do you remember your parents telling you?
1:14:36 Here’s what I remember about my parents, genuine curiosity that also tells you a lot about
1:14:37 your partner.
1:14:41 And then there’s a few other natural moments in a relationship where it just makes perfect
1:14:43 sense to talk about money.
1:14:48 When you get engaged, when you get married, if and when you move in together pre or post
1:14:53 marriage, if and when you have children, there are these natural moments where you get the
1:14:56 gift of being able to talk about money.
1:14:58 The people talk about money, couples.
1:15:02 They talk about it when something goes wrong.
1:15:06 Outside of that, what sort of percentage of people, couples, do you think talk about money?
1:15:07 Rarely.
1:15:08 It’s very low.
1:15:09 I know.
1:15:10 I speak to them all the time.
1:15:11 I ask them, “When do you talk about money?”
1:15:12 They go, “When we’re fighting.”
1:15:17 Or when they talk about it, it’s these grooves that have been created for 40 years.
1:15:20 “Oh, every time she goes to Target, she spends too much.”
1:15:23 And I’m like, “That’s not that funny.”
1:15:28 Like the running joke between you is that she spends too much at Target.
1:15:29 Sounds like resentment.
1:15:30 Yeah.
1:15:39 Why not it be something different so that when you talk about money once a month proactively,
1:15:41 you always start off complimenting your partner.
1:15:42 You go, “You know what?
1:15:48 I really appreciate that when we travel, you always pick the best flights.
1:15:53 I have total trust because you always get us there on time and you pick the flights that
1:15:56 are so comfortable and I just love you for that.”
1:15:59 That’s a great way to reframe how we talk about money.
1:16:03 But instead, we often simply do not talk about it proactively.
1:16:06 We only talk about it when something is a problem.
1:16:09 Do you think our partner should know how much money we have?
1:16:12 When you’re married, probably a little before that as well.
1:16:16 I’ll tell you what happened with my wife and me.
1:16:20 So in my book, in chapter nine, I talk about how to talk about money and when to talk about
1:16:21 money.
1:16:24 And first of all, there’s a lot of personal finance experts that are like, “You should
1:16:26 talk about money on date one.”
1:16:27 I’m like, “Have you guys ever been on a first date?”
1:16:28 Can you imagine?
1:16:31 Who’s talking about their asset allocation on the first date?
1:16:32 I’m like, “Get a life.”
1:16:40 So she had asked me years into our relationship some 401(k) question and I was like, “Read
1:16:41 this book.
1:16:42 Learn it.
1:16:43 It’s in there.”
1:16:44 So I knew all about her money.
1:16:46 We had talked about her finances.
1:16:51 And then as we started getting more serious one day, she came to me and she said, “I don’t
1:16:54 feel comfortable because you know everything about my finances and I don’t know anything
1:16:56 about yours.”
1:17:02 And that was a sobering moment because I realized I had violated my own rules.
1:17:06 In chapter nine of talking about money early and proactively.
1:17:08 Why didn’t she feel comfortable?
1:17:11 She didn’t feel comfortable because she felt like I knew everything.
1:17:13 And she didn’t know anything about me.
1:17:19 Being in the dark about your partner and their finances is very uncomfortable.
1:17:21 Your plan, we were planning to get married.
1:17:22 So what does that mean?
1:17:23 Does he have debt?
1:17:24 Does he not?
1:17:26 Does he have this much money or not?
1:17:31 Does he expect me to pay the exact same amount for this apartment because I don’t know if
1:17:32 I can afford that.
1:17:35 There are, what does it mean for children?
1:17:36 What does it mean for our elderly parents?
1:17:38 All that stuff.
1:17:39 This is what money means.
1:17:42 Money is not just an amount in a spreadsheet.
1:17:44 It’s where do we live?
1:17:45 Security.
1:17:46 Security.
1:17:47 Who do we get to be?
1:17:54 And you know, security is a really good, that word haunts me because we, I realized
1:17:58 to my horror that I had not shared about my finances.
1:18:06 So we had a series of conversations and as we got engaged, we had more.
1:18:12 We started talking about money a lot and I mentioned to my now wife, I said, it’s really
1:18:17 important for me that by virtue of me running a business for so long, I’ve accumulated
1:18:21 this business, these assets, and I love you, but it’s important for me that we talk about
1:18:23 a prenup.
1:18:26 And I was very, very scared.
1:18:31 I had talked to a lot of friends and I’m sharing this because prenups are another thing that
1:18:34 always happen in the dark.
1:18:35 And I don’t want that.
1:18:39 I want people to shine a light and to understand how these conversations happen because nobody
1:18:40 talks about this.
1:18:43 I’m going to talk about it.
1:18:46 So I was nervous and all the advice online is awful.
1:18:48 It’s like, um, have the conversation.
1:18:50 I’m like, what conversation?
1:18:51 What do I say?
1:18:53 Or some people, they tell you to blame your lawyer.
1:18:55 My lawyer insisted I have a prenup.
1:19:00 I’m like, if I can’t be honest to my soon to be wife, what kind of relationship do we
1:19:01 have?
1:19:03 So that’s what I said to her.
1:19:05 And she responded like, awesome.
1:19:08 She was like, wow, I didn’t expect that.
1:19:12 I don’t know much about prenups, but I’d be willing to learn more.
1:19:13 I said, fantastic.
1:19:15 So we start talking more about it.
1:19:23 We both get lawyers as you’re both required to, and it was going pretty well until it didn’t
1:19:32 and we started really disagreeing about money and we were, we’re just like fighting.
1:19:38 And she finally said, we should go see somebody because this conversation is not going the
1:19:42 right direction and, and I totally agreed with her.
1:19:47 So we literally went on Yelp and we searched like therapist near us and we found one right
1:19:48 there.
1:19:51 We went and we sit down and this therapist was great.
1:19:55 She asked us, what does money mean to you?
1:19:58 And she asked me first.
1:20:00 So obvious money means growth.
1:20:03 Like I could literally see the compound interest charts in front of my eyes.
1:20:11 I know about the rule of 72 and expense ratios growth, of course.
1:20:13 She asked the same question to my wife.
1:20:20 My wife says safety like what?
1:20:24 That’s like somebody saying metal, money means metal to me.
1:20:26 I go, huh?
1:20:33 And it was that that we realized we saw money completely differently, completely.
1:20:38 It explained to me why my wife wanted more money in just sitting in a checking account.
1:20:42 When I go, but that checking account is losing potential interest.
1:20:44 Why would we lower our yield, blah, blah, blah?
1:20:49 We were looking at it through two totally different lenses.
1:20:54 So that single question was very helpful in us reframing our conversations.
1:20:55 It didn’t change everything overnight.
1:20:57 We still had a lot of conversations we had to have.
1:21:02 And even once we got married, we still have conversations now they’re different.
1:21:06 They’re about spending and investing and prioritizing.
1:21:11 But it was a new way for us to look at the way we related to money.
1:21:14 Where did her lens come from?
1:21:16 Childhood like most of ours.
1:21:17 Same for me.
1:21:23 So in fact, every time I talked to couples who are now in the seat that I was in, I
1:21:26 ask them, what do you remember about growing up with money?
1:21:29 And they always tell me similar things.
1:21:30 My parents never talked about money.
1:21:31 That’s very common.
1:21:35 Or they said certain phrases like we can’t afford it.
1:21:36 Money doesn’t grow on trees.
1:21:40 We don’t talk about money in this family, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
1:21:48 Even you here, we can’t afford it a hundred times, a thousand, 10,000 times growing up.
1:21:52 And you turn 25, 35, you start to make decent money.
1:21:57 But every time you go to buy something, you feel guilty and you feel anxious and you feel
1:21:59 like I should be saving this money.
1:22:03 And you can’t figure out why because on paper you make more money.
1:22:08 If you came to me on my podcast, we would trace it back and you might realize it is
1:22:12 something as simple and vivid as sitting around the dinner table and hearing mom or
1:22:15 dad saying, we can’t afford it.
1:22:21 Our childhood sticks with us and we could change, but it’s so important for us to acknowledge
1:22:23 that it sticks with us.
1:22:27 If I approach my partner and I say, I want to get a prenup and they say, what?
1:22:28 You don’t trust me?
1:22:29 Yeah.
1:22:33 And they say, no.
1:22:34 What do you do?
1:22:35 Is that the question?
1:22:37 Well, I would say, first of all, I wouldn’t start off like that.
1:22:40 I think there’s…
1:22:43 That is one of the most important conversations you’re ever going to have in your life and
1:22:44 the subsequent conversations.
1:22:46 So take it seriously.
1:22:49 You show up and you explain it.
1:22:51 I explain it perfectly and they turn around and say that.
1:22:52 And they say, no.
1:22:54 They say, you don’t trust me?
1:22:55 No.
1:22:56 Okay.
1:22:58 That’s a contingency you might have to plan for.
1:23:01 So you might say, okay, can you tell me why?
1:23:02 Tell me what’s going through your head.
1:23:06 I want to understand your perspective.
1:23:07 This is a conversation.
1:23:08 It’s not a dictate.
1:23:09 Trust.
1:23:10 You don’t trust me?
1:23:11 Yeah.
1:23:14 Would you marry that person?
1:23:16 I would have a lot more conversations.
1:23:22 I can’t say yes or no because you can’t judge someone based on their reaction in a situation
1:23:23 they’ve never been in.
1:23:27 How am I going to react if I got in a car accident and I start crying?
1:23:30 Can you judge me my entire life based on that?
1:23:31 No.
1:23:33 But let’s say that we extend it.
1:23:38 And you and I are in a relationship and I ask you, it’s important for me by virtue of
1:23:39 this and that.
1:23:42 And you go, I don’t, you don’t trust me?
1:23:50 If you are unwilling to even discuss it, if you’re unwilling to talk to friends, to talk
1:23:55 to lawyers, to talk to people you can find on your own or I can introduce you to, then
1:23:58 I think we have a bigger disagreement about values.
1:24:03 And you know, the way that most of us think about a prenup is it’s usually some rich asshole
1:24:07 telling someone who has way less money, like sign this paper or it’s over.
1:24:09 And again, that’s Hollywood.
1:24:19 Prenup, which I learned is all about if the marriage ends, what you had before or any
1:24:22 agreed upon assets stay with that person.
1:24:28 So if you have a business and your partner and you get married, there’s no prenup.
1:24:35 And for whatever reason, God forbid you separate, suddenly that business might be at risk.
1:24:41 The portfolio that you accumulated before you ever met your partner might go to them.
1:24:45 And that, when you explain it that way, most people go, oh, that doesn’t really seem fair.
1:24:50 But the money that you accumulate together as married partners, yeah, there definitely
1:24:54 should be an agreed upon, that money needs to be split, et cetera.
1:24:59 And no person, especially the partner who earns less, should be left out in the cold
1:25:00 ever.
1:25:07 Do you notice any differences when you speak to these couples or on your podcast in gender
1:25:10 differences as it relates to people’s relationship with money?
1:25:13 Because I’ve read a lot of stuff about men being more prone to gambling addiction and
1:25:14 gambling generally.
1:25:15 Yeah.
1:25:16 Yeah.
1:25:17 I think there are a lot of differences.
1:25:22 I think gender is one of the axes that people differentiate on.
1:25:26 I see typically more aggressive investing from men.
1:25:30 I typically, if I see a gender difference in investing differences, it would be much
1:25:32 more conservative with women.
1:25:39 I might see words like safety and security used more commonly by women.
1:25:41 But I think there are also other axes.
1:25:45 Socioeconomic class is a huge one that we talk about.
1:25:50 And that’s something that’s very under the covers, particularly in America.
1:25:52 But we talk about it point blank.
1:25:57 If somebody tells me I’ve been poor before and I can be poor again, doesn’t bother me.
1:25:59 I can tell you how they were raised.
1:26:03 I can tell you probably to some geographic area, in fact.
1:26:09 If they tell me my parents said be seen and not heard, that tells me a lot about someone
1:26:11 in their financial behavior.
1:26:14 So there are different axes that you see different behaviors on.
1:26:17 When you look at really successful rich people that are living their rich life that might
1:26:21 be billionaires, millionaires, or just living their rich life.
1:26:26 What are the unobvious things that the character traits, the philosophies towards life that
1:26:32 you see, whether it’s, I don’t know, confidence, whatever that means, whether it’s patience.
1:26:34 What are those like character traits?
1:26:38 They’re really good at multiple things, like really good.
1:26:47 When I was at Stanford my first year, there was a Nobel laureate professor and the professor
1:26:51 next to him was making a joke, but it wasn’t really a joke.
1:26:58 And he said, you know, you’ll hear stories about a person being an amazing chemistry professor,
1:27:02 but they’re just a disaster at home, et cetera, but not him.
1:27:05 He’s a Nobel laureate, I think it was in chemistry.
1:27:08 He’s at the top of his field in chemistry.
1:27:14 And by the way, he’s published papers in music and he’s an accomplished father.
1:27:20 That was the first time that I had been exposed to the idea that you can be absolutely amazing
1:27:23 in multiple domains because it’s a comforting story.
1:27:27 We tell us that, oh, this person’s really good at this, but they’re probably a disaster
1:27:29 and everything else.
1:27:33 What I find is that the people who are really good at something, they’re actually good at
1:27:34 a lot of things.
1:27:36 They take those skills and they transfer them.
1:27:38 They show up on time.
1:27:42 They prepare even though they didn’t need to look at all the preparation you’ve done.
1:27:43 It’s cool.
1:27:45 You didn’t need to, but you did it.
1:27:49 And they’re probably good, socially skilled.
1:27:50 There’s a lot of things they’re really good at.
1:27:56 So for me, that is inspirational because it means that I have a lot I can work on.
1:27:57 Flip that coin then.
1:28:01 On the other side, people that you would bet on, give me three character traits of people
1:28:08 that you would bet on never living their rich life in terms of character traits.
1:28:14 Number one, they’re surrounded by people who keep them down versus build them up.
1:28:17 So that would be phrases like, why do you need to do that?
1:28:18 That’s weird.
1:28:21 Don’t get too big for your britches.
1:28:26 Number two, impulsive.
1:28:31 They make decisions based on what’s in front of them versus stepping back and looking at
1:28:35 the entire chessboard and having a long-term perspective.
1:28:41 And if I were to ask them, tell me two things in your life that you do with a long-term
1:28:42 perspective.
1:28:44 They would probably struggle to answer it.
1:28:48 Whereas a long-term thinker would be like, oh my God, I could talk about this for four
1:28:49 hours.
1:28:57 Investing, parenting, travel, what I wear on my feet, and on and on, health, perfect.
1:29:01 And three, no personal vision of a rich life.
1:29:04 So if I ask them, what is your rich life, they go, I want to do what I want when I want.
1:29:07 I go, yeah, yeah, what?
1:29:11 I want, you know, I want the house and I want the car and I go, OK, what type of car?
1:29:12 Like a Ferrari?
1:29:13 OK, like how come a Ferrari?
1:29:16 Oh, it’s just cool, like a red Ferrari.
1:29:18 Like no personal connection to it.
1:29:23 If they were to say, I want a Ferrari because, you know, my uncle once had a Ferrari and
1:29:27 I saw the race in Italy and blah, blah, blah, I go, wow.
1:29:30 But if it’s just things, objects.
1:29:31 Driving without a sat-nav.
1:29:32 Yeah.
1:29:33 Yeah.
1:29:34 Super interesting.
1:29:37 I wish I’d had this conversation when I was 18.
1:29:39 I’d certainly be in a much different position now.
1:29:44 I think about if I, if I’d been even more savvy with my money and I had it compounding
1:29:48 sooner in my life, my life would be, would be a lot different.
1:29:51 I actually, I pondered and that’s why there was such a pause there, whether it’d be happier.
1:29:53 Because I go, I don’t even, I don’t even know.
1:29:54 Well, your story brought you here.
1:29:55 Yeah.
1:29:56 What you did.
1:29:59 And look, I wish I’d started squatting when I was 14 years old.
1:30:01 I didn’t know what a squat was.
1:30:06 And so we all deal, we play the cards we’re dealt with and then we make the best with
1:30:07 what we’ve got.
1:30:09 And I never want anyone to feel like it’s too late.
1:30:11 There’s always something you can do.
1:30:15 Honestly, your life has turned out obviously very fantastic.
1:30:18 But I love that you grapple with these questions just like anybody.
1:30:20 We all wonder, is it too late?
1:30:21 What if I’d started five years ago?
1:30:24 And of course we can’t do anything about that.
1:30:27 We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for
1:30:28 the next guest.
1:30:30 And the question that’s been left for you without knowing who they’re leaving it for
1:30:40 is, okay, what is other people’s biggest misconception of you?
1:30:49 I think the biggest misconception is that I have a very specific way of telling you
1:30:53 what your rich life is, but that’s not true.
1:30:58 That comes across because people often interpret what I say about buying a house that I’m telling
1:31:00 you, don’t buy a house.
1:31:01 Not true.
1:31:03 I’m going to buy a house one day myself.
1:31:11 What I crave is encouraging someone to build their rich life with intentionality.
1:31:13 Don’t do it like me.
1:31:14 My rich life is mine.
1:31:18 Your rich life is never going to look like mine, nor should it.
1:31:23 The misconception is that I’m telling you, follow this exact formula and you will be rich.
1:31:28 No, follow this formula and you will have a lot of money, but building a rich life takes
1:31:33 your unique creativity, and only you can do that.
1:31:37 Do you see that as a piece of work that we all need to do, like the kind of the exercise
1:31:38 that you ran me through there?
1:31:43 Do you think that everybody needs to do that initial piece of work to really sketch out
1:31:44 what they’re doing?
1:31:45 Of course.
1:31:46 Otherwise, what are we working for?
1:31:47 You’re saving money blindly.
1:31:48 That’s what the whole journal is about.
1:31:53 You’ve got to know down to the intimate detail, what is my perfect Saturday?
1:31:54 What do I not want to do?
1:31:58 I guarantee you, when I ask people what their perfect week looks like, 0% say, “I want to
1:32:00 spend three hours doing laundry.”
1:32:01 I go, “Great.
1:32:03 Can we use money to solve that problem?
1:32:04 Easy.
1:32:05 Luggage in the airport.
1:32:06 Can we use money to solve that problem?
1:32:07 Done.
1:32:08 We never have to think about it again.”
1:32:11 So we’ve got to design our rich life.
1:32:12 It doesn’t just happen to us.
1:32:15 Nobody trips and falls and lives a rich life.
1:32:18 It is intentional and it is ongoing work.
1:32:22 In my opinion, it’s one of the most important pieces of work that we can ever do.
1:32:23 You’re right.
1:32:24 Exactly what this journal does.
1:32:28 I will teach you to be rich journal.
1:32:31 Throughout this journal, you hold people’s hand through those exercises.
1:32:36 With a solo or you do it with a partner and you get to dream about money.
1:32:39 Most of us feel so nervous and rigid and scarce about money.
1:32:40 We feel ashamed.
1:32:42 This has almost no numbers.
1:32:44 It’s all about what does your rich life look like?
1:32:48 If anything, you finish this and you are dreaming bigger, not smaller.
1:32:52 When I look at this journal, as I go through it, there’s a real emphasis here on just how
1:32:55 you’re heightening people’s, turning the lights on in terms of what money is, but really
1:33:00 heightening their self-awareness about their relationship with money as well, which seems
1:33:02 to be the foundation of getting good at money.
1:33:06 Your other book, I will teach you to be rich, which is the second edition of this book.
1:33:10 The first one came out, I believe, in 2009, just after the financial crash, which is fucking
1:33:11 perfect timing.
1:33:15 This one came out in 2019, so this is an updated version of the book.
1:33:18 I mean, millions and millions of people have bought this book.
1:33:23 The nuts and bolts of money, if you don’t know how to get started investing, if you
1:33:28 have debt and you’re not sure what to do, if you even have questions about, should I
1:33:29 buy whole life insurance?
1:33:31 The answer is no.
1:33:34 Should I buy or lease a car?
1:33:35 It’s all in there.
1:33:41 No guilt, no excuses, no BS, just a six-week program that works.
1:33:47 You’re referred to as the new finance guru, and I think we do need new finance gurus because
1:33:50 there’s not enough financial literacy from the very start of our lives.
1:33:54 As you saw from my story, where my relationship with money was catastrophic, and I could be
1:33:58 in a much, I’m very aware that I could be in a much different position because of those
1:34:03 early mistakes I made and mishaps and my early relationship with money.
1:34:05 People do need to start getting educated with their money because, as I said at the start
1:34:09 of this conversation, it is about living your rich life, and that is a subjective thing.
1:34:14 For me, it was having the freedom of choice broadly across every fast set of my life about
1:34:19 where I spend my time and who I spend it with, but it is the foundation of that freedom of
1:34:23 choice, and that’s what your book and your work does so brilliantly and articulately.
1:34:28 It gives us the path to freedom of choice, and we get to choose what our rich life looks
1:34:29 like.
1:34:30 Thank you so much for your time.
1:34:33 Thank you for being an inspiration and being a loud voice in the conversation around money.
1:34:37 I know so many of the people listening to this podcast are completely in the dark about
1:34:41 money, and so having these conversations and having the practical roadmap to how we can
1:34:45 improve our relationships so we can unlock the future we want is incredibly important
1:34:49 now, and I’m sure it will remain incredibly important in the future because there’s going
1:34:55 to be a lot of influences like Instagram and TikTok that are trying to tell us a story
1:34:59 about money and aspirations and what we should be aiming at that are unhelpful and counter
1:35:11 productive to our happiness, so thank you Rameet.
1:35:23 Thanks for having me.
1:35:26 (upbeat music)